Should I buy a big TV that I don't want?

[TheYearOfSmallThings]

We have a 32" TV, and every child who has come for a playdate this summer (and that feels like hundreds) has said "WHY do you have such a tiny TV?!" often followed by "MY TV is SIX times bigger than this." My son has been to their homes and is now questioning whether we too should get a great big massive humongous TV, and ideally hang it on the wall, maybe over the fireplace instead of a mirror.

I fucking hate huge TVs. I hate them, and I would prefer not to have one. But...I don't want my son to be one The Weirdo With The Small TV, and I could just not look at that corner of the sitting room (it is NOT going on the wall).

There is a tiny, shameful part of me deep deep down inside which kind of wants a big wall-mounted telly with its very own pair of fancy curtains to draw across it when not in use. It may be the most bourgeois 1970s LMC yearning I have, even if it's something for which no actual parallel in real life can be found.

We have an enormous tv and it's great. We don't go to the cinema anymore so it saves us a fortune 😂

I love that. You could pretend to be a minor royal unveiling the plaque at a new hospital wing every time you watch Corrie

The technology had obviously advanced enormously since we got our old small one and the picture quality on the new one is incredible.

I don't even like the amazing picture quality. My friend has a very fancy TV and when you are watching it you can clearly see that the two hard bitten detectives having an intense conversation on the mean streets of NYC are actually pretty-boy actors with a layer of orange paste on their faces, and the mean street is clearly a set, and it is all being carefully lit and doesn't look real.

I would probably get used to it, but I'm not sure I need to see every pore on the newsreader's skin.

I have a tiny TV too OP as I really hate massive ones. I got a larger one last year on a whim, and immediately sent it back, reverting to the older one as I hated it so much! Don't cave in to social pressure.

You don't have to get a massive one, a lot of people have 50/55 inch ones, ours is 50" so it fits in the chimney breast side, it's about the right size for our 4m x 4m room, I don't like them on walls above fireplaces and it would be a bit high

I don’t have a tv. I watch on my iPad. My grandchildren live with me, poor, deprived souls. I’ll expect SS call tomorrow.

@IcedPurple

OMG NOOOOOOO not last years model!

😂😂

@TheYearOfSmallThings mine is 26/28 (can't remember which) and about as deep! Philips, 2 man to lift job. I was given that, and an under counter fridge when I moved in here, I figured 'they'd do' until I'd renovated & coukd update. Well 13 years on they're both still going strong! I've even knocked the TV off its stand (hit a bump when wheeling it across the room! Straight onto its screen and it just carried on playing 🤣

i get attached to things, so it'll be here for as long as it wants to be! The picture is still very good, the only issue is my aging eyes struggle with text in films on it (like if they show phone messages etc) oh & it doesn't really like red button or anything technical, but we're alike, like that! 🤣🤣

when the time comes. I'm not sure what I'll buy? But it won't be huge!

i doubt the kids will tease him and to be honest, if they're going to tease him, they'll find something to tease him about - batter a small tv than something personal.

I use my TV screen for online fitness classes as well as watching programmes in comfort. It is much easier than using a laptop/tablet/phone.

We have a stupidly large TV that we had no intention of buying when we did, but we were only told 48 hours in advance of having paid a non-refundable fee to build our fireplace wall that they would only build the TV hole to the size of the TV that we had at the time, meaning we'd never be able to upgrade in future. Cue an emergency TV purchase.

I also hated big tellys but when mine needed replacing I got a 40 inch one because it fit perfectly on the unit and now I love it. It’s bigger than the 32 inch but not ridiculous.

It's crazy. When I was growing up we had a 14" TV 😂. 32" seemed massive not that long ago. Admittedly I do like a big tv

We have a 32 inch TV. There is no way in hell I’d have a bigger one. My pet hate is rooms where the massive tv is the first thing you see. I think it’s so naff.

My husband had just pointed out out tv is actually 26 inches. Still, it’s big enough!

See I disagree I hate old fashioned huge fireplaces they make me feel a bit sick. I like a cauldron style log burner in the corner. Big TV in the middle after all thats what I like to do in my living room.

I hate high TVs though give me neck ache. Has to be seating level.

My mum has a tiny TV and an ok fireplace. We have the opposite. Seems so boring to have a tiny one.

We don't have a TV in kitchen diner though so its nice to have a place without one.

Op I say sucummb my friend still remembers being picked on for not having a vhs in the 1980s.

Not sure what size our tv is but it's not that big. We bought it recently but no way were we getting one of the ugly monstrosities that so many people have.

It's on a tv stand. I hate tv's on the wall. Looks so tacky

I'd quite like a cinema screen in my house for winter but there is absolutely no space for it anywhere amongst my collections of artwork and other stuff. So I only have a very small one.

I think you'd need a separate tv room if you had a massive tv and not many people have room for that.

I think my TV is 32". I don't bother with it most of the time. I watch tv on my iPad (minimised to a corner whilst I'm working, or full screen whilst I'm working on my laptop) and that seems fine to me!

My parents were insufferable snobs re not wanting a bigger TV

They finally bought a bigger one and had to shamefully admit that if course it made for much better viewing visually

We just put ours above our fireplace so we can have shelves and cupboards in the alcoves and it's created so much more space in the room - I really like it and it almost makes it less of a focal point imo because it doesn't take up an entire corner and I have more room for books. It's 50" but DH now wants 65". He's not much of a reader 🤣
In my experience, bigger ones only look ridiculous for a short time and then you get used to it. Saying that - you shouldn't buy something you don't want. Maybe 40" wouldn't be ridiculous if you decided to compromise.
As an aside- I hate imperial measurements 🤣

You’d hate my sitting room! Small TV and massive inglenook fireplace with seating for 3 😂

Don’t give in. We had a friend who came round once and commented that our tv was very small. He hasn’t been invited back and we did away with the tv entirely, much better 👍 I hate when a tv dominates the room and the room is arranged around it, which is hard to avoid if it’s so big.

Our ancient telly broke a few years ago- was 32 inch. We were treated like utter weirdos in Curry's when we said we wanted to replace it with another 32 inch TV.

Our reasoning was that our living room is relatively small, a bigger telly would make it seem like we were in a cinema and we didn't like the look of big TVs dominating front rooms.

We were persuaded in the end to buy a 40 inch because it did more of the stuff we wanted a TV to do (linked to a particular device we use) but for a good couple of months even that seemed insanely huge. Ken Barlows head seemed as though it was as tall as The Shard!

DHs best friend has an 83 inch TV. That's almost 7ft. It looks completely mental in their ex-council houses modest front room. And the sound from it makes the floor shake even when it's just at a normal volume. Not for me.